Halle Berry was born on August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA to African American father Jerome Berry, a former hospital attendant, and Caucasian mother Judith Berry, a retired psychiatric nurse. Halle also has an older sister named Heidi. Halle first came into the spotlight at 17 years old when she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio in 1985 and a year later in 1986 when she was the first runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant. After participating in the pageant, Halle became a model. It eventually led to her first weekly TV series, 1989's "Living Dolls" (1989), where she soon gained a reputation for her on set tenacity, preferring to "live" her roles and remaining in character even when the cameras stopped rolling. It paid off though when she reportedly refused to bathe for several days before starting work on her role as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) because the role provided her big screen breakthrough.